The facts here are not in dispute. The Nice Guys, Shane Black’s 2016 action-comedy about mismatched detectives set in 1970s Los Angeles, is very good. Most people who have seen it agree on this. It’s got a pre-Barbie Ryan Gosling being a bumbling goof and Russell Crowe trading on decades of tough guy roles to suck belly laughs out of viewers and it has a 91 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, which is admittedly not the definitive arbiter of taste but about as good as we’re gonna get for our purposes here. And I like it a lot, whatever that counts for in your ledger.
The problem is that, despite all of that in its favor, and despite the classic Shane Black wisecracks and almost unnecessary Christmas tie-ins that made movies like Lethal Weapon and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang so good, it bombed at the box office. Just deadly numbers. Like, under $40 million, which is… bad. And infuriating. It’s so good. I watch it and The Muppet Christmas Carol every year during the holidays, which is about as clear a distillation of my personality as you’ll ever see.
The extra infuriating thing here is that the ending set it up so well for a second movie, or even a little mini-franchise, which the box office numbers sank to the bottom of the ocean. But I still want another Nice Guys movie. And I think I figured out how to do it. And get it made in time for this holiday season, 10 months away. I know Shane Black is in. He said as much in an interview with Fandango a while back. Here, look.
“In a heartbeat, if someone would pay for it,” Black told Fandango when asked whether he wants to make a follow-up to The Nice Guys.
“We had all kinds of ideas. The problem is it didn’t do that well at the box office. I imagine it will break even, which is not a formula for reacquiring two very expensive movie stars and proceeding with a sequel.”
So there. It’s settled. Now we just need to figure out how. Allow me to present my simple, four-step plan for making this dream a reality.
STEP ONE: We all watch The Nice Guys a lot
This is the easy part. We just watch it a lot — it’s on Netflix right now! — and we tell everyone to watch it a lot, which serves two equally important purposes:
- It gives us an excuse to watch The Nice Guys a lot, for a good reason, which we don’t even need but is nice to have anyway
- It builds word of mouth and makes the film a phenomenon
That’s right. We give it the full Suits treatment. That’s officially a thing now. Suits, a show that ran on USA Network a decade ago and you maybe watched four episodes of while doing dishes, became a worldwide megahit when everyone decided out of nowhere to watch it last year, and now, again, 10 years later, this resurgence has resulted in the creation of the upcoming Suits universe. Here’s a blockquote for that, too
It transitioned to streaming and was available on Prime Video and Peacock for years until, in an unassuming, modestly priced ($200K-$400K an episode) second-cycle non-exclusive deal, Netflix this year took in the first eight seasons of the show, sharing them with Peacock.
What followed was nothing short of a lightning in the bottle. Possibly fueled by curiosity over Markle’s final role before becoming a British royal and helped by the series’ breezy, addictive storytelling and memorable characters as well as a launch in the summer when popcorn fare has always thrived, Suits has exploded in popularity and last week surpassed Ozark for the most No. 1 overall finishes in the Nielsen Streaming Top 10 ever.
So, yes, there is precedent here. The dam on these things has already been broken. We can force this into existence through sheer will. Which brings me to…
STEP TWO: We wait for someone at Netflix or wherever to realize they have a hot little package on their hands
Again, not too hard after we get the ball rolling with the first step. Look what we have here:
- Ryan Gosling is coming off of his Oscar-nominated turn as Ken in Barbie, a very good movie that pretty much everyone watched in a theater last summer
- Gladiator 2 is in production and, even though Russell Crowe will not be in it, will probably result in a flood of people watching the original again, which will serve as a good reminder how much Russell rules
- Angourie Rice, who plays Gosling’s wiseacre daughter in the movie, just starred in the new Mean Girls musical
I think a streaming service could get on board with that. And look at the video up below the heading here. Everyone looks like they’re having fun. I bet they would do it if we can figure out the logistics. This is where it gets tricky, especially if we want to turn this whole thing around by this coming Christmas. Which I do. Because I’ve already waited seven years and I’m not a patient person.
This brings me to…
STEP THREE: We kidnap Shane Black and lock him in a cabin and make him pound out a script
This is a bit of a drastic step. I’ll admit that. It is also a felony, which would put me at risk of going to prison, which does not seem like something I would enjoy. But I don’t see any way around it. It’s not that Shane Black seems unwilling to do it. We covered that already. It’s more that his dance card for this year is already full and he won’t have time unless we step in. He’s already committed to making a movie with Mark Wahlberg and LaKeith Stanfield. Another blockquote:
An adaptation of Donald E. Westlake’s Parker novels, the feature stars Wahlberg as the hardened professional thief who is, naturally, double-crossed and left for dead. His hunt for revenge, however, brings with it a shot at the biggest heist of his career. But, per the studio, even with the help of his partner, an actor-slash-con artist named Grofield, he’ll still need to outsmart a South American dictator, the New York mob and the world’s richest man if he hopes to stay alive.
And three more bullet points:
- I’m cranky about this because the last time there was a Parker movie it featured Jason Statham in a cowboy hat and I don’t see why Hollywood would deny us more of this in exchange for Mark Wahlberg
- I mean, like, the mildest and most gentle kidnapping ever, one with no bodily harm or even property damage, more of a nudge toward the cabin if we can
- I am aware that this step is basically the plot of the Stephen King horror classic Misery and I have decided that I am okay with it
Okay, so we’ve got everyone on board and a script and we are ready to go. But we still have to coordinate the schedules of a number of very busy people and pay them a lot of money and get this whole process shot and edited and all of it in a matter of months.
This brings me to…
STEP FOUR: We mobilize the federal government
Hear me out:
- If we can wage a trillion-dollar war on a few weeks’ notice I am very sure we can get a movie made for like $85 million, which is basically a rounding error for the Department of Defense
- Please do not bring politics into this
- That is not the point
- I swear to God, don’t do it
- Making a sequel to The Nice Guys is a bipartisan issue that will bring the country together
- The Founding Fathers would have wanted this
- (Probably?)
- I don’t know what these clowns in Congress are up to that’s more important
- I’m kidding here but still
I know these last two steps got a little outlandish. If you are squeamish about kidnapping and/or using nine figures of tax dollars to fund a silly detective movie getting made at warp speed, I suppose I can wait until 2025 for a new Nice Guys movie.
But that’s it.
I have been as patient as I can.